compile a 100-things-about-me list

I said in entry 14: “I’d like to believe that the universe gives us nudges (and occasionally, shoves) towards things that would make our lives better. This is not so much a belief as an idea (as Chris Rock says in Dogma), but I look back on my life so far and for all the difficulties and detours, it really looks like I’m being led towards something.”

I no longer believe this. Believing this is an insult to people who have been less fortunate than me – people whose lives are full of pain without apparent purpose.

I don’t think if there is something there, that that something would be angry with me for thinking based on available evidence. But most of all, there is far too much senseless suffering in the world for me to think that I‘m being led towards something. My life has taken some major twists and turns – but I’ll just be thankful for what luck I get, and try to do my best with it.

I like to talk openly, and hear others talk openly, about the less polite bodily functions. I wouldn’t say I’m fond of toilet humour – I just like how they are the things that we all, every one of us, as human beings have in common.

Everyone poops and farts and have earwax and snot and maybe skin problems and scars and blemishes and sometimes get constipation and goop in their eyes in the morning… it’s just that, those are the things that makes us human. And it feels like in being “polite” about not talking about them openly, it’s easy to lose touch with these “imperfections” that all of us – regardless of “race”, ethnicity, class, gender, looks – we all share. I feel like we’ve lost touch with them in the same way that we have become ashamed of our bodies because we’ve got used to hiding it. At least being clothed has the purpose of keeping us warm.

I mean, take airbrushing – how on earth is it even accepted? Why haven’t we boycotted every single magazine or film or advertisement that uses it? We’re talking about standards that even our supposedly most beautiful models and actors cannot live up to. And we let ourselves be surrounded with it, so we can believe it to be the norm, that we are disgusting because of our flaws, that we have to hide these flaws as best we can.

I have this memory, of one of my favourite conversations with friends: I can’t remember what we were talking about, but I had raised a question about some bodily function that nobody ever talks about. And I wasn’t making toilet jokes – I was asking my friends how they dealt with it, the effects of it. We started talking about it openly, frankly. And I remember feeling more connected with them as human beings then, than I had for a long time. It’s the great equalizer – no matter who you are. How “successful” you are. How beautiful you look. You still have to deal with these things. And when you get old (if you’re lucky, it doesn’t come earlier), your bodily functions will start demanding more and more of your attention and time, as it gets harder and harder to hide them from “polite company” – to pretend we are something we aren’t.

Why not just bring some of it out in the open now?

I have an autistic and mentally retarded brother. He is 15 months older than me, and I haven’t seen him for a while. He lives in a home, and I know my parents ensure that he is well taken care of. He doesn’t talk, and his difficult behaviour meant he had to be in a home. Last time I saw him, I wasn’t sure if he even recognised me. I don’t know how he feels about me, because he doesn’t talk or know how to communicate.

Because of my (lack-of-a) relationship with my parents, it’s very difficult for me to have a relationship with my brother without having one with my parents too. And unlike in a Hollywood movie like Rain Man, he does not lean his head on your shoulder to show that he cares about you at the end of the movie. When I went to his home to visit him – if there’s one similarity between Rain Man and our lives – I got a strong impulse to take him out of the home. But rather like Tom Cruise in the movie, I can’t take care of him. I feel like I was a carer for him for most of my childhood, and in between that, my family and my depression, I have barely lived.

So I haven’t been to see him. My heart kind of broke the last time a worker there asked me why I didn’t go to visit more often – and I couldn’t explain anything about my family situation or how I wish he didn’t have to be there, and that I couldn’t cope with going to see him every week. I know my parents love him very much, and will take good care of him. For now, that’s the best I can do.

I care about immigration, refugee and asylum issues. I’m fortunate enough to have never been a refugee myself. But my immediate family did move here to the UK to escape the 1997 Chinese takeover of Hong Kong. (Which hasn’t turned out to be quite as bad as people thought it would be, so far.)

It makes me angry and bitterly sad to see the hatred directed towards immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers. I want to ask people, Have you ever had to leave behind your home? Your culture, your family? Your friends, and everyone and everything you’ve known?

I remember the first time the plane descended through the clouds over London, and my 12-year-old self wondering why this world-famous city looked to me like the countryside – most of the buildings were only one- or two-storeys high, and made of brick! (I had been living amongst concrete skyscrapers.) I remember the first few years here, when I never adjusted, resented being brought here, and yearned for home, for my friends. I remember it only dawning on me about a week before I left Hong Kong, what I would be leaving behind – because I was 12, and didn’t know what it meant. I remember the hollow feeling in the guts that week, the hollow feeling of being up-rooted. I remember trying somewhat desperately to spend as much time as I could with my friends in my last week, trying to hold on to what little time I had with them. I remember my grandmother hugging me and kissing me on the cheek, for the first time and the last, at the airport.

I remember when I finally got to go back years later, and found it was no longer my home. I remember the twist in my heart when I excused myself in the middle of a meal in a busy restaurant with my grandmother to use a public payphone to call one of my best friends from before, hoping to arrange a time to meet up during my short stay there, and hearing on the other side of the line the awkward disinterest of someone who had obviously moved on. I remember being stopped by a policeman there and asked for identification, because it was that obvious I did not belong.

I remember for the rest of my time there – which I had been looking forward to for so long – I remember just sleeping through the rest of that holiday, heartbroken, realising my home was no longer my home.

I know the feeling of not fitting in, hard as you try. I know culture shock, the kind that isn’t over a 2-week holiday but over years and years, with you trying to adjust and never quite adjusting, trying to catch up but never catching up. I know what it’s like to have to work hard to learn the smallest things everyone else take for granted, because they grew up with them. I know casual racism, and not so casual racism, though I’m very lucky to have largely stayed out of situations and environments where it would’ve been violent. I know what it’s like to lose all your extended family, because of geographical distance, because before long you no longer spoke the same language, and you wanted to explain the troubles in your immediate family and why you hadn’t called or written and why it wasn’t because you didn’t care, but you couldn’t, because you’d lost your language in order to learn the one you now use to survive. I know how it is that people expect you to straddle two cultures, each culture expecting you to fit in and belong to them.

Now, I love London. London is my home. I love London not because it’s “the greatest city in the world”. I don’t love it because of all the ways it’s supposedly better than other cities, though it of course has its strengths. I love London because this is now the closest thing to a place that feel like home. I say I love London, but really, I only love the parts of London I’ve been to – London is a big city. I’d miss those parts of London when I travel, when I’m away. That’s love, I think.

I read – I think it was on the website of the racist extreme right political party over here whose name I won’t mention, because it’s my 100-things and I don’t want to see their name here – I read them trying to present their stance against any immigration and their repatriation proposals as being for the poor children who are torn between cultures. I’ll say this: the culture shock really was hard in a way I cannot tell you. It’s not necessarily the case for every immigrant, but it was really hard for me. Though I’m much better adjusted now, it still is, in many ways. It is hard, but you know what? The immigrants and the children of immigrants are hopefully going to be the people who have experienced first-hand what it’s like to be in more than one culture. They’re hopefully the ones who’ll understand that culture is just shades of humanity. That foreigners aren’t enemies, that countries are just lines on a map drawn a long time ago by some politicians. And they’ll hopefully be some of the people there to build the bridges and dissolve the divisions. Because it’s only hard because people make it hard. So however hard it was and is, I’m glad to be one of them. I wouldn’t be anything like the person I am today if I hadn’t come here.

And I hope one day I’ll be able to do something to make it easier for others. My situation was very fortunate – I wasn’t fleeing war or persecution. I already had reasonably fluent English before I came here, and Hong Kong being a British colony at the time, I didn’t have as much of a culture shock as I would’ve had had I been from some other country/culture that was more different. I had legal citizenship, a passport, some family that had enough money to manage, some support system.

So I can only begin to imagine the hardships of refugees and asylum seekers, and the things people and the media say and do to vilify them make me angry and sad. The idea that people leave their home, their family, their friends, everything they knew and loved, just to take advantage of your country – it’s so preposterous I can’t even begin.

I find it generally very easy to fall asleep. I know how very very lucky I am with this – it’s my one escape I can rely on when I really need a break from things, and I don’t know how my sanity would’ve survived without it. The problem used to be that I slept too much – but these days even though I feel like sleeping too much, I find it hard to justify losing so many hours of the day, with so many things I want to do. So I’m more likely to not sleep enough these days.

I have fallen asleep standing up, plenty of times :) I almost always fall asleep on long train, bus and car journeys. On bus and car journeys it’s pretty much necessary, because I get motion sickness very easily on buses and in cars (and coaches especially).

It’s not all good – the reason I fall asleep so easily is because I feel exhausted so much of the time. It’s very frustrating when I start nodding off during the day, which is often, when I want to get stuff done.

I have excellent dreams :) Again, very very fortunate. My dreams tend to be fully-formed, action-packed films – Hollywood style, Hollywood length, with full new plots and characters and everything. The trouble is, they’re so amazing, but I can never remember them when I wake up – I just wake up knowing how great it was, feeling it slipping away from me, and wanting to go back.

If I could remember any of those dreams, I would have full scripts on my hands. I’m always aware in the dream of what great stuff it is my brain is coming up with, and trying to will myself to remember, but I never do.

Sometimes, instead of action film plots, I get comedy sketches. I literally wake up laughing. It’s wonderful, but then it sinks in that I can no longer remember what I’m laughing about.

I’m not good at writing or coming up with ideas, and it frustrates me immensely that there’s obviously a part of my brain that is, yet I have no access to it, except temporarily during dreams, which I’m very thankful for, but damn.

_{(The reason I’m remembering to write about this is because I had the most amazing dream last night. And I so wish I could tell you about it. But all I remember is Kurt Russell being the main character (which is odd, I’m not a fan, or even that familiar with him.) He had issues with his father, and gambling. There were shootouts, fights, and at least one motorcycle chase. And a real heart to the story – he met someone younger who had similar issues, whom he took under his wing, and they supported each other. That’s all I remember.)}

Some people would say I’m sarcastic, but I don’t think I am at all. Sarcasm is “the use of irony to mock or convey contempt” – and I rarely ever do that. Ironic would be closer, except I hate the word. Tongue-in-cheek maybe?

My sense of humour tends towards the random and silly. I’m not much good at wordplay (because my vocabulary’s lacking), and I’m not really a witty person, but my brain loves making surprising and silly connections between things, and that kind of thing makes me laugh the most.

I can’t try to be funny; when I am funny, it’s not really me, it’s my brain doing it, and I’m surprised and delighted by it just as when it comes up with anything else creative. I make myself laugh a lot. I love making others laugh too – that’s a bonus.

I have good comic timing, but can’t deliver scripted jokes well – I’m only good at it when I’m not thinking about it and letting it happen naturally.

I’m funnier in person than on the internet, because it’s difficult to convey tone and timing in text (for me anyway), things are often misinterpreted and you don’t get immediate feedback, so I hold back. I hold back a lot too in person, because I hate when my sense of humour doesn’t connect with somebody else’s and they just stare at me blankly. I don’t even know if I’m funny or not really – friends seem to laugh, but they know me well enough to know when I pause expecting laughter :) (What else are friends for if not to laugh at your jokes? :) ) But I’m by nature a compulsive joker, and the more relaxed I am with you, the more I would be making jokes in between every other sentence.

Still, there’s only ever been one or two people I’ve met who I’ve truly connected with on a sense of humour level – when we would say complete nonsense to each other that leaps from one random thought to another and build on each other into extended imaginative flights of fantasy, and almost every conversation is a joy. When that happens it’s absolutely wonderful, and at those times, I feel like I’m closest to being my free self.

One of my favourite things is, er, leaps of thought. It’s kind of hard to explain. It’s fun, for a start. (More on that in the next entry.)

I like subtle and understated things, stories told or points made but not quite concluded, left for you to join the dots in your own head. It’s a trust. I find things more enjoyable, powerful and longlasting that way.

That is how I most like to write and communicate in general, because how great is the feeling when you realise someone else’s mind is making the same leaps as you? Or rather, with you?

I am an introvert. I think. Not really sure though. Because when I was little, I used to always get in trouble in school for talking too much during lessons whilst the teacher was talking. I was also representing the school in poetry recital and public reading competitions, and sometimes even winning. I liked the stage.

These days most people would describe me as very quiet. I don’t think I am though. At least, that’s not how I am naturally. Between family problems and moving over to this country and leaving all my friends behind, I got much quieter. And then the depression thing kicked in, which doesn’t help.

But even now, if I feel comfortable in someone’s company, I can be very, very talkative. So I don’t know. Maybe it’s a fluid thing, and maybe I’ll become a bit more extroverted in future. Who knows. I mean, I’m fine with being introverted, but I think for the sake of balance (and sanity) it would do me good to move a little in the other direction. That will come when I find more people I’m comfortable with and my niche in the world, I think :)

I find women much more attractive without makeup on.

I don’t believe in fate really. Otherwise what would be the point? I believe we have a choice. And though I don’t know if there’s a god or anything like that, I’d like to believe that the universe gives us nudges (and occasionally, shoves) towards things that would make our lives better. This is not so much a belief as an idea (as Chris Rock says in Dogma), but I look back on my life so far and for all the difficulties and detours, it really looks like I’m being led towards something. I hope so anyway.

[Edited]